Northern Comfort
by ls269
Summary: A little story about Severus Snape's family, and what they were like to live with! The Prologue takes place when Severus is a little boy, and the two concluding chapters are set in his adulthood, after he has left Hogwarts.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

It was a hot, cloudy afternoon in Spinner's end, and the streets were stewing in the unseasonable warmth. Severus and his mother were sitting in the back garden – a thin strip of yellowing grass between two red-brick walls, with a splintered wooden fence leading onto an alleyway at the back.

There was a washing-line suspended between the two brick-walls, and Eileen Snape was pegging sheets, shirts and socks over it. She had draped a shawl across her bony shoulders, but it was trailing loose at one end. It always did. She didn't notice the world outside her head very much anymore.

Her forehead was furrowed with resentment, and she was gnawing on her lips. It was the expression she always wore when she was dredging up all her most painful memories – and sometimes, she found it difficult to see her son through the resulting mud.

The past would never stay buried, not with Eileen Snape. It got up out of its grave and lurched around her, groaning and stinking, and clamoring for her attention. Sometimes, Severus thought she couldn't even see him. She looked right through him, as though _he_ was the memory.

Severus was sitting on the upturned laundry basket, relishing the quiet. He liked watching the neighbours walk past in the alleyway outside. His mother had told him there were wizards everywhere in the muggle world - walking around in disguise, hiding their talents, talking in code, identifying one another with secret handshakes - and Severus was playing a game where he guessed which of the many passers-by might have a connection to the magical world. Not that group of guffawing boys wheeling their bicycles beside them, that was for sure - though they might have some troll ancestry some way back.

They watched a young woman walking past the fence. She had a round, pretty face, and was wearing a short, brown dress under her coat. Every time Severus remembered Spinner's end, it was in these muted tones of brown, or beige, or orange. The carpet in the living room was patterned with beige-and-cream swirls, like chestnut puree stirred into ice-cream. The exposed filaments in the electric fire glowed a demonic orange, and started humming at random intervals, as though it needed to fill up the silence that frequently descended in the living room, when there was no shouting.

And there were those three brown ducks on the yellow wallpaper, always mocking Severus with their suspended animation, their perpetually postponed escape.

One of the first times he'd ever performed magic, he had animated those ducks and made them zoom, head-long, out the living-room window. They'd been trying for so long; it was only fair that they should get their freedom in the end.

He still didn't know where they'd ended up. He'd briefly indulged in fantasies about using them as his own private, winged army – pecking out the eyes of those dim-witted muggle children in the playground, and flying off with their sweets.

Still smoothing down the linen on the washing line, Eileen watched the round-faced girl walk past with her eyebrows raised.

"That's Mrs. Johnson's daughter, from number Six," she muttered. "According to Mrs. Reynolds, she's no better than she should be."

Severus thought about this. "How good should she be?" he asked.

"It's an expression, Severus."

"A muggle expression or a wizard expression?" he persisted, wondering whether he should make a mental note to use it or avoid it.

"Keep your voice down."

Severus thought this reply was pretty spurious. He knew for a fact that his voice _was_ down. He never said anything louder than it needed to be, simply because he had such a deep-seated dread of drawing attention to himself. What his mother really meant when she said 'keep your voice down' was 'be quiet'. Still, she hadn't said 'be quiet', which, in Severus' mind, meant he still _technically_ had permission to ask questions.

Even as a six year-old, he was good at finding the loop-holes in other people's arguments.

"Tell me some wizard proverbs," he said, as softly as he could.

Eileen Snape gave him an exasperated half-smile, glanced over her shoulder, back towards the house, and then walked over and picked him up. Balancing the skinny boy on her hip, she raised his ear to the level of her mouth, so that she could speak in whispers. She walked up and down the garden with him like this, and Severus had a vague notion that she used to do this when he was very small. Talk of the wizard world was always guaranteed to calm him down or make him behave.

"There's 'Don't count your dragons before they're hatched'," she murmured, as though she was reciting a secret incantation. "And 'No use crying over Spilt Potion'."

Severus, who had heard the muggle equivalents of these proverbs before, giggled delightedly.

He listened to his mother talk, torn between happiness and dread. The look in her eyes was sharpened somehow – not misted over with resentment anymore, but glistening with pain instead. He knew it made her unhappy to talk about the wizarding world, because she missed it so much, but the times when she was talking about it were the only moments when she ever _looked_ at him.

But there was something else, too. If dad came out and heard them talking like this, there would be 'trouble'. Severus knew a million definitions of the word 'trouble', but they all hurt. Sometimes, the pain would be sharp and immediate, like the kind you'd get from a slap, and sometimes it would be subtle and gnawing, like the kind you get from watching your mother cry.

Trouble never, ever meant a trip to the sweet shop or a nice drive through the countryside. Unless it was a drive through the countryside to the hospital.

"And there are rhymes about what your wand prefigures for your future," she went on, in that same happy but oddly strangled voice. "You see, witches and wizards have wands made out of different types of wood, and there are folk beliefs about what each one says about the wizard who holds it." And she recited, in a dreamy voice:

"Wand of willow, tears on the pillow;  
Wand of oak, he'll frighten folk;  
Wand of larch, or wand of rowan,  
Quidditch players aren't uncommon,  
But if he has a wand of pine,  
He'll be remembered for all time."

"What's your wand made out of?" Severus asked instantly.

Eileen hesitated. "That's not important."

"It's willow, isn't it?"

"Don't be clever, darling."

Severus stopped to consider this advice. "I thought it was a good thing to be clever."

"It is, as long as you don't let anyone know that you are."

"What's the point of being clever if no-one's allowed to know about it?" he asked peevishly – but he stopped, because his mother's eyes were starting to mist over again. He recognized that withdrawn look – it meant she was leaving him – so he pulled himself back from that line of questioning. He put the cleverness to one side, vowing to pick it up again later, and tried to think of something innocent to ask.

"When do I get a wand?"

"Not 'till you're eleven."

"But I'm definitely getting one, right?"

Eileen Snape gave him a rare smile. "The way you made my good china fly out of the living room window yesterday, I'd say you're definitely getting one, yes."

Snape smiled. He liked making things fly. He did it almost absent-mindedly, whenever he was staring out of the window at the rain-lashed suburban streets. It was therapeutic, and not just because it frequently led to things getting smashed.

There was an empty whisky-bottle half-buried in the grass at the end of the garden, and the sight of it wiped the smile off his face instantly. It would have been nice to think that it had been thrown over the fence by some passer-by, but Severus knew better. His father even kept bottles wedged in between the books on the book-shelf, as though he was trying to neutralize the threat of 'Advanced Potion-Making' or 'The Tales of Beedle the Bard', by placing grim reminders of the muggle world right next to them.

As if Severus needed any reminders.

Snape had taken the bottle out when he was five, and tasted some of the foul, searing-hot, liquorice-flavoured liquid inside. He'd dropped the bottle, coughing and spluttering with shock, and it had spilled all over the carpet, and all over his grey T-Shirt and tattered jeans. When his dad had come home, he'd been more angry than Severus had ever seen him before. He'd cradled the empty bottle in his arms as though it were a lost child.

Eileen Snape had immediately run him a bath, and scrubbed him till his skin was raw, trying to get the stink of the alcohol off him. It was nearly Christmas, so her longing for the wizard world was at its most intense, and her depression at its lowest ebb. She talked bitterly about her husband "and his muggle poison." Severus was in a cold dread all evening that his father would creep up the stairs and overhear her. But he never crept anywhere. That was the only good thing about him: you always knew when he was coming.

They had stayed in the bathroom until Snape's skin was crinkled. His mother had taken an unnaturally long time drying and dressing him, as though she was polishing the best silver-ware. They both knew that, as soon as they strayed out of the bathroom, there was going to be 'trouble' – Severus had a feeling that all the definitions of 'trouble' he'd ever learned would hardly cover it. The bathroom was their sanctuary, like the safe place in a game of tag, but they couldn't stay there forever.

"Mum," Severus had whispered, as she was buttoning up his pyjama-shirt. "Let's run away! You could magic him to sleep, I know where your wand is."

"He'd just be angrier when he woke up," she muttered.

"But we wouldn't be there!" Severus insisted. "We could escape!"

"Where to?"

"To the wizards," he replied impatiently, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You don't understand," Eileen moaned, running a distracted hand through her hair. "They don't want me back! They won't want you, either, after what I did." She stopped to steady her voice and smooth down his wet hair. "You'll have to _make_ them want you," she added, in the same hushed, reverent tones she always used when talking about the wizard world, "by working hard, and being clever, and making friends with the right people."

Severus was silent for a moment, staring at his bare feet against the cracked tiles on the bathroom floor. "Alright," he said at last. "I will. And, when I've made them want me, they'll want you too, right?"

Eileen turned her face away, but Severus kept on talking stubbornly.

"And then we can escape. And forget any of this ever happened."

"Just be quiet now," his mother said, in a flat, defeated voice. "It will be alright."

Severus longed to question the logic of this statement, but he stopped himself. Sometimes, being clever really didn't do any good.

Eileen had clearly hoped to avoid an argument by putting him straight to bed, even though it was five in the afternoon. Severus hadn't protested. He always did everything in his power to avoid an argument. But he knew he was under suspended sentence. He lay under the covers, watching the daylight filtering through a chink in the curtains, and waited for his father's anger to catch up to him. He could hear the shouts and laughter of other children playing in the street outside, and, all at once, from nowhere, without passing through annoyance or dislike on the way, he hated them. He hated everything about them. It was a rush of feeling that almost made him throw up. He didn't understand why they got to be outside playing, while he was lying in bed, waiting for what his father eloquently described as 'a good thrashing'. What had they done that he hadn't? He'd seen them in the school play-ground. They pushed each other off steps for fun; they stuck chalk up their noses; they ate worms, for God's sake! It wasn't fair!

He'd been dragged out of bed just as the other children were being called in for their dinners. But he couldn't remember anything after that.

It was this episode that had caused Snape to be so fascinated with Potions. He wanted to understand why the liquid in his father's bottle had meant so much to him; why he loved it more than his wife and son.

This was the first idea – that potions could command love, and loyalty, and respect – that they were powerful. And, as with all powerful things, you had to get on the right side of them.

The second idea was that he'd made a promise to his mother to be a great wizard. He could pull her out of this muggle slum, and out of the clutches of the gin-soaked gorilla she'd married, if he worked hard.

Eileen Snape didn't keep many potion ingredients in the house, but Severus had her books (whisky-stained now, and later to be covered with spidery-writing, as he developed his own spells and theories, and sank deeper into dark magic and despair). He spent afternoons out by the canal, looking for wolf-spiders, aconite, or dead bees.

The dead bees were never a problem. Most things died by the canal-side, as though it was a place of pilgrimage for sick animals. He'd seen dead foxes, dead cats, dead hedgehogs (their quills weren't as good for Potions as Knarl quills, but they were often used as a cheap substitute). Snape was at ease with death. A lot of harm came from the living, but the dead tended to mind their own business, and Severus liked creatures that minded their own business.

He wondered whether potion-brewing could be traced. His mother had said that the Ministry of Magic put a Trace on under-age wizards, so that they always knew when they were performing magic out of school, but potion-making was just putting things into a cauldron. Surely even a muggle could do it?

That was the third thing that attracted Severus Snape to Potions. It didn't sort the wizards from the muggles; it sorted the clever people from the idiots. And this was a far more exclusive club to belong to. Magic was everywhere, but common-sense was rare as diamonds.

Still, he'd brewed the potions in his bedroom, just the same – that way the Ministry of Magic would assume it was Eileen Snape who was performing the magic.

It was probably the only magic they'd ever monitored in her house since she'd married.

He liked being busy. It provided a focus for his anger. And he could escape into the Potion books - where everything was logical - where power was just a matter of paying attention and following guidelines, and had nothing to do with people.

And, as he worked, he learned that it _was_ magic, in a far more subtle way than he'd realized. There was no wand-waving or dragon-taming, no loud bangs or disappearances (well, there were disappearances, of course, but the sinister kind – the kind you get from turning a human body into a puddle of liquid on the floor).

The potion reacted to his moods and his intentions. It took the impression of his thoughts. He was infusing these ingredients with magic as he brewed them. A muggle couldn't have made these potions, after all. He could have measured out the ingredients, thrown them into a cauldron, and stirred counter-clockwise until he was blue in the face, but they wouldn't have become poisons, or truth-serums, or love-potions. It took magic – and thoughtful, logical magic at that – to transfigure these ingredients into a working potion – into a liquid draught of intentions.

For the first time in his life, Severus Snape felt in control of something. Watching the shimmering fumes evaporating from the small cauldron he'd set up on his bedroom floor, he felt calm and confident.

Potions were not unreasonable or erratic like humans. You could predict the way they'd behave. Simply learn their properties, and their combinations, and you had a formula for predictable chaos. It was complicated, but not conscious.

As a teenager, when he wanted to impress girls or beat Potter, he would go back to hexes and charms and transfiguration – and they were all fine, but they rewarded confidence, and strength of feeling, not intelligence and subtlety. Severus had strength of feeling, but he didn't like putting it on display. It made him vulnerable. Showing people you cared about something was like handing them a manual on how to hurt you, with the important passages underlined in bright red ink. But Potions couldn't betray your feelings – only your thoughts. And he was seldom ashamed of his thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a meagre bonfire. It consisted of the last personal possessions of a man who'd led a meagre life. There was a shaving brush, a bundle of greying socks, a bunch of old newspapers with depressing headlines. The starched shirts – already crackling in the heat – were mottled with blood and whisky stains. Each one represented a memory to Severus Snape – but they were not the kind of memories that he was sorry to see go up in smoke.

He stepped back, breathing deeply, and watched the mismatched pile of objects smoking. It looked as though the bonfire, just like the man it commemorated, was going to need a bottle of whisky to get it going.

Severus unscrewed the top of the bottle. It was a cheap brand, called Northern Comfort. An oxymoron, of course, but he had never shared this observation with his father. He didn't have much of a sense of humour, especially about his precious whisky.

He sniffed the bottle and felt his empty stomach writhe in protest. There was nothing left to throw up; he hadn't eaten in days. So he didn't resist the burning nausea; he let it run, tingling, from the pit of his stomach to the roots of his hair, until the world swam reluctantly into focus again. At least the disgust was _energy_. He'd been drooping under the weight of the past few days' events, as though he was beaten – as though he was _sorry_. He wasn't sorry. God forbid. He'd rather douse himself in whisky and leap head-long onto the bonfire than feel _sentimental_ at this moment. The ham-fisted moron had deserved everything he'd got.

This was like attending the funeral of a man who'd kept him chained to a radiator for twenty years. It was impossible not to feel liberated. But, at the same time, he couldn't be _glad_. What was there to celebrate? The damage had already been done.

He threw the open bottle onto the fire, and listened with satisfaction while it glugged, hissed and ignited. The flames rose and crackled merrily, sending a pall of smoke into the already-smoky Manchester sky. The spirit of his father – if there had ever _been_ a spirit under all that growling – clearly wouldn't depart without a drink.

The wind rose at his back, damp and smoky, and raised goose-bumps along his bare arms. It patted him on the shoulder, just like a consoling relative might have done, if there had been any left. Severus would have shrugged them off, of course, and he did the same with the wind, hunching his shoulders and folding his arms against its intrusive touch.

He was tired and hungry – well, the hunger had turned into a kind of burning sickness at the pit of his stomach – but he _assumed_ he was hungry. He was still remarkably clear-headed, though. Snape's greatest advantage – and his greatest disadvantage – was his ability to ignore things like cold and hunger until they were very nearly killing him. He had such a vivid, morbid imagination that it soared and slunk by turns, above and below those vulgar physical sensations.

Besides, he was supposed to be in mourning. It looked good, to refuse all food and keep the dark circles under his eyes. The Aurors were watching him.

And the Ministry had specifically told him to burn his father's possessions. They didn't want things like moving photographs or enchanted tea-sets falling into the hands of other muggles. Severus was mildly amused that they expected his father's possessions to contain any reminders of the magical world at all. To his knowledge, the spell that had killed Tobias was the first magic to be performed in Spinner's End for ten years.

He felt the nausea – or whatever it was – stir at the base of his stomach again. Severus kept his gaze determinedly fixed on the fire, blurring his eyes in and out of focus, until it settled grudgingly back down. He couldn't afford to lose control now. Not when he was so close to getting away with it.

'Getting away with it' would not be as nice as it sounded, he knew. In fact, it would probably involve more pain than _not_ getting away with it. But pain was something he could deal with. The alternative was unthinkable.

**‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›**

It had started the day before yesterday, when he'd come to visit his mother for her birthday. He could hear the yelling from the street outside. And, when he knocked on the door, and his mother welcomed him in, without looking at him, the argument had ceased for a few moments – like a stream trying to find some way of flowing around a new obstacle. The hatred hesitated, pooled, and then broke over his head.

"You didn't tell me he was coming," Tobias rumbled, flicking down a corner of his newspaper, so that he could glower over the top of it.

Eileen Snape hesitated. She had just enough self-awareness left to refrain from admitting that she'd forgotten. Severus was sickened by the fact that this actually made him happy.

"You didn't ask me," she replied.

"Oh, so now I have to ask you every time I want to know what's going on under my own bloody roof?"

He was particularly fond of that phrase. _Under my own roof._ Severus wondered what it was about the roof that made him so bloody proud. It was missing at least a dozen slates and it leaked even in a light drizzle. Still, you had to take pride where you could, if you had nothing else.

With another miraculous stroke of mercy, Eileen didn't answer him. She went through to the kitchen to fix the dinner, and Severus sat down, relishing the silence, while his father sank back under his doom-laden newspaper. From across the room, Severus read the words 'Murderer sues Grieving Widow'. It was a perfect summary of Tobias Snape's dark, outraged, grumbling views on life.

He was sitting in his usual armchair. It would be smoking gently on the bonfire in two days. Severus could remember him sitting in that armchair for hours at a time, perfectly still, his arms placed stiffly on the arm-rests, while he stared at the patterned wallpaper on the opposite wall.

The armchair was torn in places, and leaking polyester stuffing. Tobias smoked and drank so profusely in that chair that Severus, with the instincts of a born potions brewer, couldn't get the word 'flammable' out of his head. He got a definite feeling that his father could go up in smoke at any minute. Of course, he would have got that feeling anyway. Experience was a wonderful teacher.

Eileen wandered back in, passed her son a plate of food, and then wandered out again. She looked straight through Severus, into whatever world of past agony she was currently inhabiting. He was used to it by now.

It wasn't her fault. She _forgot_ things. She got caught up in bitter memories, and couldn't pay attention to what was happening right in front of her nose. She let the potatoes boil over on the stove. She left her dinner cooling on the table, while she wandered through rooms which she only recognized as the scene of past humiliations.

While the argument was in abeyance, he bolted down his dinner, listening to every separate tick of the clock on the wall. He was almost happier when they were fighting. At least then he wasn't sitting with hunched shoulders, sick with dismal anticipation, waiting for them to start. But that was why it was hell. It was all stops and starts. The pauses were irregular, and just long enough for hope to begin crawling treacherously out of its hiding place. And then it started up again. Probably with a very innocent-sounding phrase like: "Why can't you ever put the lid back on the mustard jar?' And it made him want to burst out laughing – even though he had never done anything that impulsive in his entire life. How could hell sprout up out of a little thing like that? A whole dark empire from a mustard seed.

Severus tried to eat the boiled potatoes, and looked around. He knew the living room so well. Everything about it was depressingly familiar and soul-crushingly _muggle_. The patterned wallpaper that made your eyes blur in and out of focus. The worn carpet patterned with beige-and-cream swirls. The electric fire with its glowing orange filaments, stretched wide like a demonic grin. There were no framed photographs or china ornaments on the mantelpiece. They wouldn't have lasted a week.

But he still came back here every year, for his mother's birthday, as though he was on some kind of masochistic pilgrimage. He didn't even know why he did it.

Well, he had a _theory_. It was easy to forget, when you were swept up in the hedonistic world of the Death Eaters. When you drank elf-made wine in the grounds of eighteenth-century palaces – when you trod on plush carpets and discussed the comparative merits of the Unforgivable Curses, it was easy to forget that your soul had been forged in the cramped, smoky terraces of the Manchester suburbs. But the Death Eaters were just as fake, just as flawed, as the drab, grey inhabitants of Spinner's End. Severus had never found a place where he had felt at home, or a type of person he could conceivably admire – well, only once, and that didn't bear thinking about now.

But, somehow, it was important to remember that people were the same everywhere.

Although he wanted to escape Spinner's End, he didn't want to _forget_ it. This was where he came from. It was what had made him. He would be deluding himself if he ever forgot: just like one of those snooty pure-bloods who pruned the undesirable branches of their family tree. Or, worse, one of those self-absorbed Gryffindors – who thought that, just because they didn't use the word 'mudblood', they were somehow on the side of 'good' – who thought you could perform the _acts_ of evil as long as you didn't adopt the _vocabulary_. Never. It was more important to know yourself than like yourself.

After dinner, Severus went up to his room to read. No point in antagonizing the drunken gorilla with the sight of a book on Theoretical Transfiguration. But the walls in Spinner's End were paper thin, and it didn't take long for the argument to start up again. Wherever you were in the house, it sounded as though the fight was right at your elbow.

He knew the pattern so well he could practically sing along. His nausea would build to the same pitch as their shouts, until he could feel their voices vibrating inside his chest – until it felt as though they were fighting each other in every cell of his body.

It started off small. Little digs and insults that were so commonplace they went practically unnoticed. She was 'clumsy'. She 'couldn't cook'. He was 'shiftless', 'good-for-nothing', 'drunk'. When she _really_ wanted to get his attention, she would ask him why he couldn't hold down a decent job, why he let his family walk around in rags, why he spent money on 'that muggle poison' when they barely had enough for food.

Tobias would reply in monosyllabic grunts until he was too drunk to ignore her. This generally happened around 11:30. And, for a hairy, wheezing, ham-fisted drunk, he could dart out of that chair unbelievably fast.

"Come here - ," There was a scuffling sound from the floor below. "_Come here_. You will not talk to me like that, do you understand?" Severus could practically smell the whisky on these words. "Under my own ro - ," Some dying brain-cell evidently informed Tobias that he had said that already tonight. So he switched the words around and shouted, in the hope that sheer volume could make up for originality.

"I put a roof over your head when no-one else would! I pay for your bloody _food_. Why don't the wizards take care of you, eh? Why don't the wizards give a damn about you? If they're so bloody brilliant, why don't you take up with them and leave me in peace?"

"Whose fault is it the wizards don't give a damn about me?" she shouted. "They won't touch anyone who's been near muggle scum like you." Another scuffle. It was a while before Eileen's voice came back – and, when it did, Severus heard it with a mixture of terror and relief. "You make me sick. I don't know how you don't make _her_ sick!"

'Her' was the most scathing pronoun it was possible to utter. She didn't have a name. She was always just 'her'. Severus sometimes wondered if she even existed. Perhaps she was just an excuse for them to shout at each other.

"She's not as _snooty_ as you, Eileen. She's not a wand-waving brat from the bloody whimsical world of wizardry." He paused to chuckle at this witticism, and then went on: "She doesn't spend all day muttering to 'erself, either."

"No," Eileen shrieked, "she spends all day muttering to the gossip-mongers! The whole town knows about it. Your own son got bullied at school about it, did you know that? _Your own son_."

There was a hideous silence, followed by the scraping of chairs against the kitchen tiles. It sounded as though Eileen was trying to put furniture between them.

The worst part was the triumphant way she'd said 'your own son'. There was no pain there. It was as though she only thought of Severus as ammunition.

It had worked, though. His voice was trembling with rage when it came back.

"You don't care -," Tobias growled. "You don't give a _damn_ - ,"

Severus suddenly realized that he'd been digging his fingernails into his palms. With an effort, he released them, flexed his fingers, and tried to breathe. It got worse if he intervened. The bastard would just take it out on her when he left. The last time he'd got between them, she had ended up with broken bones as well as bruises.

He had wondered more than once if he made it worse. He had spent half his life wondering if he was some kind of catalyst for their antagonism. Severus had always had the mind of a chemist – it was a treacherously appealing idea, to think of himself as the substance which accelerated the rate of their decay.

But that couldn't be true. They hardly seemed to notice him. Hatred was an absorbing pastime, and it didn't need an audience. It often _attracted_ an audience – but that was only because its practitioners tended to look possessed. You could be as surly, shy and middle-class as it was possible to be, but, in the grip of that mad hatred, you spat without realizing it, gestured like a Shakespearean actor and spilled your guts as though you were in a confessional.

Severus had grown up watching these bizarre, painfully earnest, totally un-self-conscious performances. He had grown up being bewildered by them, but every passing year fleshed out his understanding. He even said 'him', when he was talking about Potter, in exactly the same way his mother said 'her'. He had grown up watching it and now he was living it. What had once been a pantomime was now a documentary.

It was cruel, to fall into all the same traps your parents had. But it couldn't have been otherwise. That was the terrible thing about genetics. They really _were_ fighting inside every cell of his body. He was a living war-zone. You could take the boy out of Spinner's End, but you couldn't take the Spinner's End out of the boy.

He rolled over, trying to get to sleep. The argument relocated, from the living-room to the bedroom, but his parents made no other concessions to the night.

He knew how these fights ended. They subsided into a trickle of resentful mutterings that gradually nursed him into an uneasy sleep. They didn't cease upon the midnight with no pain. That would have been too easy.

But tonight, something happened. Just as Snape's eyes were beginning to drift closed, his mother stopped mid-scream, as though somebody had just clamped a hand over her mouth.

For some reason, Severus sat bolt upright in bed, feeling as though an invisible fist had curled itself around his stomach and squeezed. He'd been here before. There was a memory, just stirring at the edge of his awareness, of being five years old, lying in bed, and hearing their arguments suddenly stop. The most unnerving silence had rolled over the house, and he had gingerly got out of his bed, opened the door onto the landing and waited, with his heart in his mouth, for somebody to speak again.

Then, as now, he waited, shoulders hunched, for the screaming to start up again. Then, as now, he edged over the landing, feeling his bare toes sink into the carpet. He couldn't believe that, after all these years – after decades of learning to tune out the arguments – he was just as frightened now as he had been then. And all the details were the same – well, of course they were. Nothing ever changed in this place. But it was astonishing, how clearly he could remember the street-light filtering through the banisters, making orange tiger-stripes on the carpet. The same bars of street-light were striping his feet right now. He remembered fixing his attention on them – using them to hypnotize himself into his Occlumency state, before he'd even known what the Occlumency state _was_.

The door at the end of the landing was standing slightly ajar, and it seemed to take him forever to reach it. He couldn't remember what he'd seen behind it the last time. He could just remember staring at the door, while it loomed over him like some kind of Stygian portal.

And the same thoughts went through his head. He didn't want to reach the door at the end of the landing. If he could keep the door closed on whatever was waiting behind it, it would be as though it hadn't happened.

Even as a little boy, he'd known that was stupid. You didn't stop horrible things from happening just by refusing to _look_ at them. The sooner you looked, the sooner you could go about _fixing_ things.

Provided they could still be fixed, of course.

He reached out a hand, and pushed the door open. His memory opened up at exactly the same time, in horrible shades of dark red – and he couldn't be sure, right then, whether he was looking at the present or the past, because both scenes seemed to overlap in front of his eyes.

Except that, this time, the wrong person was on the floor.

It took Severus a while to work out that he wasn't five years old, and even longer to work out what he should do. It wasn't easy, when panic was roaring in your ears, and your insides were cramping into one hot, leaden lump.

But, eventually, he forced his lips apart, and addressed the woman who was standing, wild-eyed, beside the bed.

"It's alright," he said at last. "Don't be frightened. I'll take care of it."

And that seemed to break the spell that had been keeping her scream back. She collapsed to her knees, wand still clutched in her hand, and moaned.

Severus remained in the doorway, trying to mentally untangle his knotted stomach. That was important. Get the panic under control, and then you could move forward. He tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs had frozen solid and were not accepting new contents.

The figure on the floor was staring up at him, all square-jawed, unshaven and disapproving. It was the soberest expression Severus had ever seen on his father's face.

"What did you do today?" he asked his mother, as casually as he could.

"What?"

He stepped over to her, and she recoiled defensively, grabbing the head-board as though he intended to drag her away. Severus tried to meet her gaze, but it was everywhere. Her eyes were darting back and forth as though she was being tormented by a swarm of invisible wasps. He lowered his voice slightly.

"I just need you to talk to me, just for a few minutes," he said quietly. "It's important. What did you do today?"

His mother blinked in wretched bewilderment. "I went…" she swallowed. "I went shopping with Mrs. Duff…"

"What time did you come back?"

"I -,"

"_What time did you come back?_"

"About five?" she quavered.

Severus breathed. "Ok. Listen carefully. You _didn't_ come back. You got the bus to the city centre – the 52B – and I met you at the bus station. We were going out to celebrate your birthday."

"But it isn't…"

"Yes it _is_, mum," Snape snapped, passing a sweaty hand across his forehead. "The 20th November? The same day it was last year?"

Eileen just stared at him.

"OK," he said briskly. "Dad didn't come, because he hates the wizard world. Everyone knows that. But we went to Malfoy Manor to eat. We arrived at six, and we're still there, understand?"

Eileen put a hand to her mouth, as though she was trying to physically hold back the sobs, and nodded.

Severus took a deep breath, and tried to sink deeper into to the calm of his Occlumency state. It was hardly going to fill her with confidence if he threw up. Besides, he had seen worse than this – although that wasn't a wise thing to think about right now either.

He went back to the door, looked over the landing, and watched the stripes of street-light on the carpet, until he could feel the calm sinking through his limbs again, un-knotting his muscles, smoothing the creases on his forehead. It settled at the pit of his stomach like sediment on the sea bed.

When he opened his eyes, he wasn't frightened. He was annoyed that he was still in Spinner's End, with the brown-and-orange furnishings assaulting his vision, but that kind of light snobbery had always been a part of the Occlumency state, and, as draw-backs went, it was a fairly small one. He could live with it.

He went back into the bedroom, took his mother gently by the hand, and led her down the stairs. She was aimless and light. He could feel the bones of her wrist under his fingers.

When they got to the hall, he halted her, and looked her up and down. Her dress had been ripped at the shoulder, so he took some time tidying her up, casting charms that sewed up the dress and healed her bruises, while she stared right through him and into the recent past. Still, at least she wasn't crying anymore.

Then he went into the kitchen, washed up every plate but one – so it looked as though only one person had eaten there tonight – and re-joined his mother in the hall.

He cast a Disillusionment Charm over them as they stepped out of the door. This was a street full of twitching net-curtains and bored housewives. He supposed he would have to visit a few of them to modify their memories of his arrival. But that could wait. The Aurors got called out to muggle-killings five times a night, and this one was going to look just like the others. Questioning the locals would not be high on their agenda.

Besides, an Auror never deciphered clues if there was a chance he could just run after a suspect, hurling curses at him. They were closer to soldiers than police-men.

He pulled out his wand, checked that the Disillusionment Charm was still over them, and then muttered the word: "Morsmordre."

Eileen drew a sharp breath and squeezed his arm. _Some_ information about the outside world had got through to her then, even in her squalid, inward-looking misery. She turned her eyes towards the sky, which was opening up over their heads. The light that had shot from his wand was expanding with a noise like thunder, forming itself into the shape of a green skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. The image hung low over their heads like a rainforest canopy.

It was like one of those fireworks that explodes directly above you, fills your whole field of vision and threatens to rain hot glitter down on your upturned face.

Severus could see net curtains twitching all the way down the street. Some muggles even came to the front door in their pyjamas and gaped. He felt a thrill of contempt towards them, but it was driven out of his mind as soon as he saw his mother's expression.

The green light was reflected in her eyes. Severus felt a lurch of nausea, because they reminded him of _other_ bright green eyes – eyes that had never stared at him in horror, but would do so now, if they could see what he was doing.

"How did you learn to conjure that?" she whispered.

He turned to face her. And he met that green gaze head-on, just to hurt himself as much as possible, just to plunge the knife as deep as it would go.

"Suddenly you care?" he snapped.

But then he saw how frightened she was. With some effort, he collected himself, and gave her a bitter, sardonic smile. "I get it. Now he's dead, you care. Well, that's too late for me, mum."

He stretched out his hand, knowing that it wouldn't tremble – knowing that his eyes were so dark and expressionless it would look as though they'd been _painted_ onto his face – and said: "Now take my arm. We're going somewhere safe. I won't let them get you. But let's be clear about this: I don't owe you any explanations."


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing he noticed was how clear the skies were – and not just because the Dark Mark had so recently been hanging over him, filling up the horizon, and pouring bright green light into his mother's eyes. You could actually see the stars here – even the pearly gash of the Milky Way. For a moment, Severus felt exposed, without the smoke and street-light of the Manchester suburbs.

But there was nothing _to_ expose. The sky was just as empty as his chest. All the panic and nausea had shrunk back to let the Occlumency state take hold. He could count every one of his heartbeats; they practically _echoed_. And now every person who could hurt them was just a variable to be weighed-up and manipulated.

It was still _them_, even though Severus wasn't completely sure that his mother was still with him. She had her hand tightly curled around his upper arm, but her eyes were darting from left to right, as though she was surrounded by demons who kept lunging at her. Severus doubted she could understand him, but he spoke anyway – in a low, terse whisper – in the hope that she might be calmed by the sound of his voice. He was not usually given to unnecessary conversation, but there were special circumstances tonight.

"We're going to stay here for a while," he said. "This is Malfoy Manor. I don't know if you ever saw it before you moved away from the wizarding world."

Lucius had spoken in no uncertain terms about how much he hated wizard-tourists gaping at his residence as though they'd never seen a stunning, eighteenth-century Manor House before. In fact, he had installed a charm that gave skull-splitting headaches to anyone who stared at the neo-classical façade for over a minute. But Eileen didn't seem to be in any danger of that. Her eyes were still following invisible demons.

Severus had never seen Malfoy Manor in the daylight. It was a place that reveled in the shadows and the light of the moon. It was a place of tinkling fountains, and tiered stone terraces that stretched down to acres and acres of dark, rolling lawns. The white peacocks drifted around like ghosts, even though they made a very un-ghostly squawking sound if suddenly disturbed. The place had a subtle, night-time elegance that seemed to shun the glare of the sun.

There was so much _space_ here. And the decoration was simple and elegant and didn't make your eyes water. It could not have presented more of a contrast to Spinner's End.

"And, remember," Severus added gently, "we've been here since six."

His mother plane of existence temporarily collided with his. "But..." she floundered. "But they're going to wonder who did it…"

Severus sighed. "They _know_ who did it, mum. The Dark Mark is as good as a signed confession. Trust me, no-one is going to bother looking for another explanation."

She didn't answer, but he didn't want to lose her attention now that he had it, so he went on:

"I need you to perform a lot of basic, boring, domestic charms with your wand," he said, marveling at how steady his voice was. "They could try Priori Incantatem, and there's no way to wipe out the record of the spells that a wand has performed, but they can't tell with any reasonable degree of certainty _when_ the spells were performed, so if you cast a couple of hundred floor-sweeping charms right now, they'll think they're looking at a whole year's worth of domestic magic when they make your wand replay its most recent spells. They won't go as far back as the Avada Kedavra curse. Aurors have short attention spans."

"What if… what if they use Legilimency on me?" she quavered.

"They can't use Legilimency without a warrant. And they don't have enough evidence for a warrant. In fact, they have extremely strong evidence that the crime was committed by someone else. If it weren't for the fact that I'm a Slytherin – and therefore, by their logic, a potential Death Eater – they wouldn't bother questioning us at all."

Eileen sunk back into her terrified preoccupation, and Severus resisted the urge to shout. Even as a little boy, he'd always been too proud to jump up and down, begging for her attention. He told himself – in the forward-thinking way of all Slytherins – that he would have her attention _one day_, when he was a powerful wizard. Up until very recently, his gaze had been fixed on that mythical 'one day'. He strangled the urge to curse people, thinking about that 'one day', and now that he was sure it would never arrive, he felt both liberated and lost. He didn't know why he was a Death Eater anymore. There was nothing he _wanted_ anymore. There was nobody left to impress. But he would make the best of it, because he'd been squashing down his feelings for years – he had been patient and clever and disciplined for his entire life – and it had to have been _for something_.

He tried to let the surroundings calm him. He was always in his Occlumency state here, because the Death Eaters liked to practice inept Legilimency, and it would be unthinkable to let them discover how frequently Lily was in his thoughts. Not that they _would_ have discovered it. Their spells couldn't have been more ineffective if their wands had been replaced with dead fish, but it was the principle of the thing. One day, they might get good. And, on that day, they would discover that they were still not good _enough_.

As they walked on, he was surprised to find his mother casting floor-sweeping charms under her breath, raking up the gravel on the Malfoys' drive. It almost pitched him out of his Occlumency state, but he managed to steady himself.

"Good," he said solemnly. "Now add some others, so they don't get suspicious. Try the Riddikulus Charm. Or Evanesco. Keep them dull. Aurors get bored easily, and I have it on good authority that they hate house-work."

And, beneath the calm, he was thinking: _Please, not Alastor Moody. Anyone but Alastor I-see-dark-wizards-in-every-corner-and-I'm-going-to-make-them-pay-for-my-difficult-childhood Moody_.

The door, when they eventually reached it, was opened by a wretched-looking creature: a House Elf with bandaged fingers and bat-like ears, wearing a loosely-fitting pillow-case. Severus explained – still in that miraculously steady voice – that they needed to see Lucius on urgent business, and they were led into a cavernous entrance hall to await the 'master' and 'mistress'. The House Elf ushered them into velvet-cushioned chairs of stained mahogany, and, with a House Elf's instincts for tidyness, handed Eileen a tissue.

Snape wondered what kind of reaction he could expect from Lucius and Narcissa. They wouldn't hang him out to dry. He knew too much about them. He could denounce Lucius as a Death Eater – come to that, he could denounce _Narcissa_ as a Death Eater, which would be news to Lucius. You had to look after the Death Eaters who knew your identity, in the hope that they, in turn, would look after you.

They might try to blackmail him after this, of course. He would have to keep his eyes open. But he was good at that. They hardly ever closed.

Once again, his mother drifted back to the present. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. "It was… he made me angry," she whispered wretchedly.

Severus looked at her. It was easier to look at her, now that the green reflections were out of her eyes.

"It's alright," he said again. "I know."

He felt her grip on his arm loosen, as her attention drifted away. It unbalanced him, even though he'd been expecting it. He felt a lurch of loss in the pit of his stomach.

"_Don't._" On impulse, he started towards her, knocking the chair over in his haste. And then he was angry with himself for doing so. The tendrils he'd been inching towards her were sharply withdrawn. His face snapped back into its hardened scowl – the frown-lines seemed to deepen. He couldn't help her. She didn't _want_ him to help her. He didn't _matter_ to her. Hating her husband was still more important to her than loving her son.

That was when Narcissa and Lucius came in, and Severus greeted them with a look which was much more ferocious than he'd meant it to be. They could tell at once – from the overturned chair and the fierce misery in his eyes, that something was wrong, but they weren't Slytherins for nothing. They were all politeness and genteel caution. They maintained a safe distance – standing in a doorway which led to a sumptuously-decorated parlour – but they greeted Severus and his mother as though this night-time visit was a real treat. Snape couldn't stand it.

"We need your help," he said brusquely, cutting across the words of welcome, and trying to keep all unsteadiness, all vulnerability, out of his voice. The idea that they might think he was _begging_ them made him feel physically sick. He had no more intention of begging for their help than he had of begging for his mother's attention. "We need you to say that we've been here since six. The Aurors are coming."

Lucius and Narcissa shared a long look in the doorway – but it wasn't as long as he'd expected it to be. After only ten seconds, Narcissa raised her eyebrows, and that seemed to decide it. Lucius stepped back and motioned them inside. Whether this was a gesture of solidarity or a calculated investment, Severus didn't know. He didn't care. The shame of surviving on their charity was just a background ache at the moment.

He followed them into the sumptuous parlour. It had wood-paneled walls and diamond-paned windows. There was a marble fire-place at one corner of the room, and the wall above it was draped with medieval tapestries, depicting unicorns and maidens. Severus breathed deeply, trying to clear his mind and get the bitter taste out of his mouth.

The first thing he noticed – and it came as a genuine surprise – was that Narcissa was pregnant. When had _that_ happened? Details like that didn't usually get past Severus, but he supposed he hadn't seen her for a few months, and he usually tried to tune out Lucius's monologues about his blissful family life. They were almost as unbearable as the Spinner's-End arguments.

Narcissa's gown was emerald-green, and had the iridescent sheen of peacock-feathers. She rustled expensively as she walked. Her hair had been gathered into an elegant knot on top of her head, and it looked as though it had recently been washed and dried, because it was not as sleek as usual. Feathery static strands had worked their way out of the elegant knot. Oh god, he had probably got them out of bed, hadn't he? That realization made him more annoyed than it should have done.

Still, he was impressed by the speed with which Narcissa could look almost-flawless. He had always assumed it was the work of laborious hours and numerous assistants. But then, she was a scientist, wasn't she? She had probably experimented with lightning-quick cosmetic charms in her spare time. Narcissa liked to hone her craft under every kind of condition.

They stood together by the fireplace, to let their guests admire the splendor. Narcissa had probably worked out that, if she stood with bright lights at her back, she tended to blind people. She adored visual effects like that.

After giving them long enough to admire her, Narcissa took Eileen's hand and showed her the medieval tapestries hanging on the wall above the marble fire-place. Severus couldn't understand this bizarrely friendly behaviour, until he remembered that Narcissa's mother was bewildered, submissive and vacant-eyed too.

They waited, in tense luxury. The House-Elf brought them coffee, and Severus forced some down, for the look of the thing. His mind was racing, totally independent of his frayed nerves and tensed muscles. It was as though the cord anchoring him to those physical sensations had been cut. He could reattach it at will – and he would suffer when he did – but, for now, he was just a speeding train of thought, with a slip-stream of consciousness.

They would want to talk to the House Elf – but House Elves could lie if their masters instructed them to. What else? What was he missing? Could his mother be trusted to lie?

Severus looked over at Eileen. Narcissa was playing Gobstones with her, and she was – for once – happily absorbed in the task at hand. It was a big sacrifice for Narcissa, he knew, because the idea of being squirted in the face by foul-smelling substances would not appeal to a woman who took as much time over her make-up as she did. Perhaps she didn't expect Eileen to be so good. Either way, Severus appreciated the sacrifice.

It wasn't easy for him – because his whole being was screwed up in concentration, and every muscle was tensed in expectation of attack – but, when Narcissa looked over at him, he tried not to frown too severely.

It only took the Aurors ten minutes to arrive. Severus knew them. Moody and Scrimgeour. They were scary enough alone, but they always worked together, because Moody had a habit of turning innocent by-standers into ferrets, and he needed a shrewd, smooth-talking apprentice to handle the complaints – and the reporters. That, thought Severus – above the dull roar of the panic – would come in handy.

The wretched House Elf ushered them into the parlour, and they stood in the doorway, looking twice as grim and scarred in the fire-light, dripping rain-water onto the oriental carpets.

Moody growled: "_You_ again, is it?" But Scrimgeour put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Mrs. Eileen Snape?" he said, in a well-practised voice of hollow sympathy. "I'm sorry to report that your husband was killed earlier this evening."

Eileen started trembling, but she said nothing. Narcissa put an arm around her – and you would have to be looking very closely to notice that she was holding her shoulders a little bit too tightly, more to restrain than comfort her.

"It's alright, Eileen," she said.

"Well, that remains to be seen, Miss," said Scrimgeour, with a grim smile. "The Dark Mark was found above the house. That is – most unfortunately – not unusual in this day and age, but it inevitably leads the observer to wonder how your husband came to the attention of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and, even more pertinently, how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named knew that you and your son would be out this evening."

"Did I understand you correctly?" Lucius asked, with a frown. "Are you saying the mere fact that Severus and his mother are not dead is grounds for suspicion?"

"Just pursuing all avenues of enquiry, Sir."

"This is _boring_," Moody rumbled. "We'll forego the pleasantries, shall we, Malfoy? We all know that you and your snooty Slytherin cronies are involved with Voldemort."

Scrimgeour winced.

"That is a very serious accusation," said Lucius, folding his arms.

"Yeah, it is," Moody replied gleefully. "And here's another one. You and Snape here - ," he gave Severus a nauseated look – "got Voldemort to do your dirty work for you. You wanted this man out of the way – probably because Snape is ashamed of having a muggle for a dad – and so you arranged to take the magical members of the family out for dinner, while Voldemort came calling."

"As I understand it, Moody, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is far more likely to kill the family members of his _enemies_ than his friends."

Moody spread his arms innocently. "And that'd be fine if Snape here had a _history_ of speaking out against Voldemort."

Lucius gave him a patronizing smile. "I see. He is a suspect because he is a Slytherin. Slytherins do not proclaim their opinions in a very loud voice just to receive attention. He is a suspect because he's not like the brash and arrogant fools that _you_ went to school with."

Scrimgeour folded his arms. "It is not foolish to speak out against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir."

"And it is not suspicious to _refrain_ from doing so. If it was, you would have to arrest two thirds of the wizards in the country."

"If we have to, we will," Moody growled cheerfully. He was evidently enjoying this. "But, since we're here, Malfoy, we might as well start with you and your slimy-haired mate."

Eileen started crying. She pressed her face against Narcissa's silk-draped shoulder, to try and keep the sobs in. Severus wasn't thinking much at that moment, but later on, he would be very impressed – _very_ impressed – that Narcissa didn't pull away to stop the tear-stains from soaking into her priceless dress. She was resolute as steel.

"That's enough," she said. "You're upsetting her. Severus and Eileen have been with us all evening. The House Elf can testify, if you don't consider me or my husband trustworthy sources. You'll produce your evidence for this accusation, or you'll get out."

"My evidence, you snooty - ,"

Scrimgeour coughed loudly. Moody changed tack, without missing a beat. "My evidence, Mrs. Malfoy, is three-fold. One, it's well-known that your husband here thinks muggles are sub-human scum."

"It's 'well-known'," Lucius repeated scornfully. "'Everyone knows'. You sound like a reporter, Moody. Who _are_ these knowledgeable people you keep talking about?"

"Two," Moody went on, ignoring him completely, "we've had reports that the deceased wasn't treating Mrs. Snape very well. And three - ." Here, he approached Severus's chair, leaning down until their noses were almost touching, and all Severus could see was a vista of scar-tissue studded with sharp brown eyes. "We've met Snape before. We know he has a habit of turning up in places he shouldn't be, knowing far more than he ought to. We know he arranges his face into that carefully-blank look whenever we're getting close to the truth. We know he sticks to powerful people like a morally-deficient barnacle. We know there's nothing he wouldn't do for his sickening, Slytherin ambitions."

Severus met his gaze, allowing a flicker of disbelief to show itself through the mask. "Are you _supposed_ to talk to the bereaved this way?" he asked seriously.

"He's right, Moody," Scrimgeour muttered, just on the edge of hearing. "There have already been six complaints about you. We have to go carefully."

"We're at war," Moody pointed out, still with his face pressed uncomfortably close to Severus's.

"And that means civilians don't have rights?" Scrimgeour snapped. "It doesn't _look_ good, Moody. If the Prophet gets hold of this - ,"

"You and your damned Prophet!"

"Moody," Scrimgeour growled, nodding in the direction of Eileen. "His mother's crying again."

And that was it. That was the only thing that could have caused Moody to back off. He glanced at Eileen, and his mismatched features twisted themselves even more – in disgust, probably – or _self_-disgust, hopefully. He fixed Scrimgeour with a resentful, beady eye and nodded.

"We'll be interviewing your House Elf. And I'll be watching you _personally_, Snape," he growled, not even bothering to look at him. "Wouldn't trust anyone else with a job as important as that. You haven't got away with this."

"I hope you hunt dark wizards with all the fervour you direct against their victims," said Snape lightly.

"You can count on it," Moody replied. 

‹**×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›**

And that was it. It was almost too easy. There was still the night to get through, of course. Severus plundered the Malfoys' library and read in his four-posted bed, listening out for the sounds of his mother's stifled sobs in the next room. He couldn't do anything about it. There was probably nothing he could do for her now – but, somehow, it was important to catch every separate sob. It was important to know everything, even if it made you miserable.

He couldn't keep the clarity and calm of the Occlumency state while he slept, so he didn't try to sleep. And, when the sunlight finally filtered through the leaded windows, he felt as exhausted as if he'd been running all night – which, in a manner of speaking, he had.

He got up as soon as he heard his host and hostess stir, and found Lucius reading the paper in what was usually referred to as 'the breakfast room'. Of course, they were rich enough to have a room for every meal. They were rich enough to have a room for between-meal snacks – although they were much too thin to eat any.

Lucius knew better than to try and make him eat breakfast. They had a friendship that depended on respecting one another's privacy. He simply disappeared under his Daily Prophet, looking for one gut-wrenching second like Tobias Snape.

Severus glanced at the paper. His father's death hadn't even made the front page.

"The Dark Lord is claiming the murder as one of his," Lucius said at last, "which sounds to me like approval. He thinks _you_ did it."

"I did," said Snape expressionlessly.

"Of course," Malfoy replied, with practiced diplomacy.

But Narcissa had been alone with Eileen, and she could wheedle secrets out of anyone. She was so genteel and pretty. The picture of everything Eileen Prince had once wanted to be.

He _should_ have done it, he thought grimly. Years ago. He should have done it as soon as he was old enough to hold a wand. It might have saved her.

He should have been there, while she was inching towards the end of her tether. He should have kept trying. But Severus had a fatalistic imagination. He always assumed that his attempts were doomed to begin with. It was hardly stretching credulity to believe that his mother didn't care about him. After all, she wasn't the only woman who'd withdrawn her gaze from him, to stare at someone brash and loud and vicious.

Severus felt the familiar lurch of nausea again – like a fish-hook in his belly – but he was _not_ going to let it reel him in. It was simply too important that he kept control. She needed him now. It was too late, of course – too late for both of them – but he had to go on, just because the alternative didn't bear thinking about. He couldn't leave her to rot in a cell in Azkaban.

But what would be the difference? said a treacherous voice in his head. She's at the mercy of her worst memories anyway – what could the Dementors _do_ to her? How could they possibly make it _worse_?

He could get her out of Spinner's End, at least: stop the incessant muggleness of that dreary place from chipping away at her spirit. It probably wouldn't work, because Spinner's End wormed its way into your head, but at least there was hope this way: the slimmest, tiniest glimmer of it.

"I think he… _identifies_ with you," said Malfoy slowly, perusing the paper. "He too had a muggle father, whom he was prudent enough to dispose of."

Severus said nothing.

"Of course, he will require you to make it up to him."

"I'll think of something."

"He will give you a _difficult_ assignment."

"I'll take it."

"I wouldn't be surprised if he assigned you to spy on Dumbledore."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "Are you finished?"

Lucius smiled. It was the briefest of things, but it seemed to be genuine. He promptly hid it behind his Daily Prophet and, when his voice came back, it was smooth and business-like again.

"The Aurors will soon be allowed to use Legilimency without a warrant. Soon, they'll be allowed to interrogate suspects using the Cruciatus Curse. Panic is growing. Fanatics like Moody will get more and more freedom, and he'll be sure to re-open this case."

"So we get my mother out of the country before that happens," said Snape flatly. "She can't go home, anyway."

Lucius hesitated. "Narcissa wants her to stay here, but… with a baby on the way…"

"You don't want trouble," Snape finished for him. "I understand."

"I have cousins in Denmark," Lucius added, relieved. "They live in a castle on the coast. It's a very private estate. You can fly over it for miles without passing a single muggle settlement."

Severus, without meaning to, thought of Elsinore – where the ghosts of murdered fathers walked the halls, demanding vengeance. But the Occlumency state was too firmly in place to permit a shudder.

"It sounds ideal," he said.

‹**×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›**

The House Elf brought him a cup of coffee, and Severus sipped it, without caring that it was scalding his mouth, while Lucius yelled at the creature, telling it to look presentable when there were guests in the house. Severus let the argument wash over him. He'd had a lot of practice.

When Lucius was gone, Narcissa strode into the room, wearing lilac this morning. She looked angry, but it had not been enough to put her off her personal grooming. Her face was powdered to perfection, and every one of her silvery hairs had been sleeked back into its elegant top-knot.

"She's been beaten," said Narcissa, without preamble. "You concealed the bruises very skillfully, but I can tell."

Severus took another sip of his coffee, and continued to read the Daily Prophet. "What would you like me to say?" he enquired politely.

"That your filthy muggle father _suffered_?"

Severus replaced the cup in its saucer, and turned the page. "I have no idea," he said. "I wish to continue to have no idea."

There was a silence. Narcissa just stood there, with disdainfully-folded arms. "Things like this won't happen when the Dark Lord is in power," she said at last.

"I'm delighted to hear it," said Snape, who had never sounded delighted to hear anything.

"We can take her to Denmark," Narcissa continued, sitting at the table opposite. "The Minister for Magic there has _respect_ for pure-bloods. I - ," she hesitated, and then plunged on. "I don't think she will be any happier, but Lucius's cousins might be able to help her."

"She's beyond help," said Snape, in a carefully toneless voice.

Narcissa blinked. "If you believed that, then why did you try so hard to keep her out of Azkaban?"

Snape glanced over the top of the Daily Prophet and raised his eyebrows. "Because, believe it or not, _I_ am not beyond help, Narcissa."

Narcissa frowned. Of course, she didn't understand. He hadn't expected her to. And not just because she was a molly-coddled pure-blood. It was genuinely stupid, to put yourself through something so terrifying, just because _not_ doing it would have been unthinkable. There was no hope of gain; just the hope of avoiding further loss. Narcissa's powers of understanding were limited, but that would have challenged _anybody's_.

"What are you going to do with the house?" she said at last.

"I am going to _exorcize_ it." 

‹**×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›‹×›**

That was yesterday. He had already burnt his father's possessions – on Ministry orders, but with no small amount of relief. It helped to keep busy, so he had given himself the task of making Spinner's End _endurable_. It would probably take him the rest of his life.

Some of the house's ugliness had permeated its very structure. The patterned wallpaper had melded organically with the plaster, until you would have to bulldoze the place to remove it. Good old-fashioned neglect could be as tenacious as any sticking-charm. So he was planning to cover the walls with book-shelves. Book-spines never made his eyes blur in and out of focus quite literally _ad nauseam_.

He put a charm of Perpetual Ineptitude on the street-lights outside the house. It meant they would remain broken, and any muggle who planned on fixing them would remember the futility of life and have an instant urge to hurl himself off the nearest tawdry-looking office-block.

Then he could have the shadows, and there would be no bars of streetlight striping the carpet on the landing. It was a small, cosmetic improvement, but it made Severus feel better – especially when he got to cast the charm of Perpetual Ineptitude.

There was probably no getting rid of the smell of whisky, but the smell of aconite, heart's-ease, hellebore and mandrake could be remarkably tenacious, so he was planning to build a laboratory in the kitchen. Bundles of dried herbs and curtains of shimmering potion fumes could improve any situation. If there was no relief, there could at least be _distractions_.

It was not perfect, but it was off the radar of the snootier type of Death Eater, Auror, and Dark Wizard. Besides, something kept him from abandoning the place. The same something that had kept him visiting every year on his mother's birthday. He would not be one of those sickening hypocrites who forgot where they came from. It was more important to know yourself than like yourself.


End file.
